Month: January 2006

Over Christmas I bought Karen an iPod but quickly we realized one problem–we couldn’t play the music in the car! Short of purchasing a BMW with built-in iPod support, I explored the internet for various options and came up with three different solutions:

1. Purchase a device that will broadcast a radio signal over FM for $50+, but it’s radio quality and is prone to static and interference.
2. Use an FM wired modulator, which connects the FM signal directly to the line, but it’s still inferior to even a cassette adapter.
3. Connect directly to the CD Changer port using a special device called Blitzsafe.

Of course, I opted for the third option.

I purchased the Blitzsafe Honda-To-iPod interface from LogJam, which came with an iPod connector that also charges the iPod, a nice feature if the iPod isn’t charged. Unfortunately taking my car apart wasn’t as straight forward as portrayed on the web. My model has a cup holder, which makes it harder than the regular model, so I carefully spent an hour and made no progress. Hoping not to damage my car, I thought about professional installation, but they all charged $50+ and has a wait of a week. That was too much–I need it NOW! So I met up with my friend John, a Honda Mechanic, and he handed me some diagrams of the lower panel. I came home, took the panel apart, plugged in the cable, and in less than an hour, had the iPod playing over the car stereo in CD quality.

In the end, it was more work than expected, but totally worth it!

After some professional photo gigs for Erick and Huey’s weddings, I took a leave of absence from the world of photography (I took a break from the world of blogging too, but that’s a different story).  Right before Christmas, I decided to vent out the photo bag when I discovered that my family room is filled with snow!

Oh wait… no… my camera just kept overexposing shots!  For the Fuzzy shots, I had to resort to using Full Manual mode, taking 427 tries to get 2 good shots!  I suppose to look on the bright side, we were planning to go to Europe, and finding this problem out in Italy would have been… most unpleasant.

So I headed where everyone else would when they encounter problems like this–the internet.  After a little research, it was apparent this is the precursor to the BLOG problem.  Wait?  BLOG?  No, BGLOD.  It stands for “Blinking Green Light Of Death”.  Apparently all Nikon D70’s shipped in the first 4 months of the product was prone to this issue, even if the camera is sitting untouched collecting dust in its original box.  There’s a recall service advisory for this, but with a catch–to qualify for the free service, the green light has to be blinking.  Unfortunately mine wasn’t blinking.  I had all the symptoms leading up to it, but not the problem itself.

Knowing that this will eventually deteriorate into BGLOD, I placed it back in its bag and went on our Christmas vacation with our old Canon S400.  Of course, having used a D70 for so long, this was like getting used to driving a BMW and then being forced to drive a Corolla (no disrespect to you Corolla owners…  I’m sure it’s a… um…  respectable car).  When I came back…  lo and behold!  Blinking Green Light of Death!  Yes!!!

I promptly sent it in for service, and that was two weeks ago.  I just got my camera back today and we’ll give it some time to see if everything is fixed.  However, for how much I paid for this thing, I expected a little more than a timebomb…  oh well.  At least it’s working now.